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Poetry Out Loud

Alexander Hamilton Students Aiming for National Recitation Contest

Students from Alexander Hamilton High School are participating in the final local rounds of the national recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud, to determine who will go to the regionals in Manhattan in February. Reciting their poems before the entire student body of the school, 10 finalists will read two selections each on Jan. 13th at 9:45 AM in the auditorium of Alexander Hamilton High School in Elmsford.

"They started preparing in November of last year," said Keith Egan, high school English teacher. "For three weeks, they worked on their poems in class, committing them to memory." Participants in the contest must learn public speaking skills and gain an historical perspective on the works in order to perform them well. "There is a thin line between excellent recitation with a few embellishments and overdoing it," said Mr. Egan. Elmsford teachers use a scoring rubric for determining the quality of a recitation.

While selecting from the Poetry Out Loud website listing of contemporary and classical poems, the contestants learn a literary lesson as well. Poetry Out Loud was created by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, and is administered in partnership with the state arts agencies of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The English department of Alexander Hamilton High School tackled the contest for the first time last year, and sent several students to Roscoe, NY to participate in the Regional rounds there.